Monthly Archives: December 2013

As I mentioned yesterday, Lotusphere/Connect is not only technical or marketing/strategy sessions, it is also a very social conference. This was that case long before IBM started talking about “Social”.

Over the years, there have been a number of social activities. It started with the Turtle Party at ESPN, people meeting up Saturday night after they got in. It is named after Scott “The Turtle” Wenzel, a long-time Lotusphere attendant who no longer work with Notes, and thus was not at Connect last year. It is (like many other social activities) not organized, just a bunch of attendees and friends getting together, having drinks, food or just talking. It usually starts around 7pm.

As people started coming in earlier, a spontanious meeting at Big River Grille on the Boardwalk created another long-time tradition, BALD. It stands for Bloggers Annual Lotusphere Dinner, but you don’t need to be a blogger to show up. It is just a bunch of geeks, having a few adult beverages and something to eat after arriving to Orlando. It has been compared to a family reunion, which is a very good description. Reminder: bring cash, the waitresses will appreciate not having to run dozens of credit cards…

Part of the Lotus community/bloggers meeting for BALD at Lotusphere 2011.

Sunday evening IBM arranges the traditional welcome reception on the beach between Dolphin and Swan. Be social, make some new friends, and have some food. You need your badge (or a guest badge) to get in. Afterwards, people often head to ESPN or Kimonos.

Kimonos is the sushi restaurant and karaoke bar in the Swan hotel. For many years it was the place where everyone from geeks to IBM executives were hanging out, having some drinks and perhaps singing some songs. The last few years, Kimonos have been more crowded than usual, as more and more attendees have heard about it. This spawned the unofficial Nomonos, a bunch of geeks hanging out at different places on different evenings, often outdoors if the weather allowed it. The activities included beer tasting, smoking cigars, having apple cake shots, and just talking and hanging out.

But Connect/Lotusphere is not all about drinking and partying. There is also sports, even if that activity often include some adult beverages as well… Between 2009 and 2012, Mitch Cohen arranged Blogger Open, a mini golf tournament at the Fantasia Gardens across the road from Dolphin. This tournament took place after the closing session, and was a great way to decompress and have some fun (and some beer). In 2013, Disney put an end to it, as they could not (or did not want to) grant exclusive access to the course for an hour or two, despite the beer sales in a few hours exceding what normally is sold in months. Bill Malchisky quickly stepped in and organized Soccer Saturday as a replacement in 2013, and this event returns again in 2014. It takes place Saturday before BALD, starting at 10am and going on for 2 hours. This year, Joe Litton is making an appearance as Guest Mai Tai Master. In the past, Joe have hosted a Mai Tai party/reception in a hotel room one evening during Lotusphere.

Other social events are all the national parties. There is a Nordic dinner I often go to, and you also have the traditional UK Night, as well as Australia Night, Canada Night, etc. There is also a showcase reception Monday evening at 6pm, and of course the traditional Wednesday night party, which now have been moved to Tuesday night instead. This year it takes place at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

But you can be social and connect in many other ways. At breakfast and lunch, don’t just sit with your friends or co-workers. Talk to new people! Go to the labs, talk to the IBMers that staff them, learn more about the products and get answers from the people who actually created the tools you use!

Like this:

It is now exactly one month until Connect 2014 (the conference formerly know as Lotusphere) starts. On Sunday, January 26 there will be a number of JumpStart, Master Class and Show ‘n Tell sessions. Those sessions are longer than the regular sessions in the following days, at 90 120 minutes instead of 60 minutes.
If you haven’t made arrangements for your travel yet, I would highly recommend that you attend some of the sessions on Sunday. Is you arrive on Saturday, you can also attend the social events that day, including a soccer/football game before lunch, BALD (Bloggers and friends Annual Lotusphere Dinner) in the afternoon and the ESPN party in the evening. Be social!

JumpStart sessions
These are sessions intended to get you up and running on technologies or subjects that may be new to you. They can also help you prepare for the more in-depth sessions during the rest of the week. In the past, I have attended jumpstart sessions on XPages, which really helped me later during the week. At Connect 2014 there will be sessions about using Java for XPages development and about SAML administration.

Master Class
This is a more in-depth session, intended for anyone who already knows at least the basics on a particular subject. Here the experts dig deeper into the technical side, and help you increase yoru skills to the next level. In the past, I have attended master class sessions on subjects like CSS and administration/server monitoring. At Connect 2014, you have sessions about everything from IBM Connections troubleshooting to how to create a great XPages user interface.

Show ‘n Tell
These are sessions filled with slides and/or live demonstration of a specific technology. It could be everything from deployment of Traveler to XPages development.

Like this:

Sweden’s Saab edged out French and US rivals to win a multi-billion-dollar contract to supply Brazil’s air force with 36 new fighter jets, Defense Minister Celso Amorim said Wednesday.

Saab’s Gripen NG [Next Generation] was in competition with the Rafale made by France’s Dassault company and US aviation giant Boeing’s F/A-18 fighter for the long-deferred FX-2 air force replacement program.

Apart from the article in Slate, US media has been fairly silent on this. As I write this, neither CNN, MSNBC or Fox News has reported on it yet. The current top news on all those sites is that a bearded duck hunter from the Lousiana swamps featured in a show on a cable channel don’t like homosexuals, and thus have been suspended from the show, and that an Indian diplomat had been arrested for visa fraud and strip searched. Ironically, India is another country who are considering JAS 39 for a modernisation of their air force, competing (again) with Rafale, Typhoon and F/A-18 Super Hornet for an order of 126 fighters, worth over 16 billion dollar.

Like this:

This morning I received an email that I have been selected as one of 87 IBM Champions from 18 countries around the world. This is the first time I am awarded this honor, and I am humbled to be listed together with some of the greatest names in the ICS/Lotus community (a.k.a. the Yellowsphere).

So what is an IBM Champion? This is how Oliver Heinz (who takes over after Joy Davis as Community Manager) describes it:

These individuals are non-IBMers who evangelize IBM solutions, share their knowledge and help grow the community of professionals who are focused on social business and IBM Collaboration Solutions. IBM Champions spend a considerable amount of their own time, energy and resources on community efforts — organizing and leading user group events, answering questions in forums, contributing wiki articles and applications, publishing podcasts, sharing instructional videos and more!

Thank you everyone who nominated me! I am looking forward to see everyone, fellow Champions as well as all my other friends in the community, at Connect 2014 in January!

Like this:

Sometimes you need to remove personal identifiable information (PII) from the data you present in an application or on a web page. In the last couple of weeks this issue popped up twice, including one application which needs to be be HIPAA compliant. One solution is to mask any personal identifiable data so that the recipient can still verify the information, without sending it all in clear. I am sure you all seen this on for example credit card statements, with only the last 4 digits of your credit card number displayed.

I wrote a simple Lotusscript function to do this, and I thought I would share it so others can use it as well. You pass a string to mask, the number of characters to leave un-masked and where the unmasked characters should be displayed (“B” for beginning or “E” for end).

MsgBox masktext("TexasSwede",3,"B")

This line would display Tex*******

MsgBox maskText("1234567890",4,"E")

This line would display ******7890

Enjoy!

%REM
Function maskText
Description: Masks a text with asterisks, leaving the num first or
last characters visible. Direction is "B" (beginning) or "E" (end).
Created by Karl-Henry Martinsson - texasswede@gmail.com
%END REM
Function maskText(value As String, num As Integer, direction As string) As String
Dim tmp As String
Dim i As Integer
If Len(value)>num Then
If Left$(UCase(direction),1)="B" Then ' Start at the beginning
tmp = Left$(value,num)
For i = num+1 To Len(value)
tmp = tmp + "*"
Next
Else ' Start at the end
tmp = Right$(value,num)
For i = Len(value) To num+1 Step -1
tmp = "*" + tmp
Next
End If
Else
tmp = value
End If
maskText = tmp
End Function